Monday, August 07, 2006

LifeLinks 8/7/06

The UK's Daily Mail has a long article on women traveling to various beauty clinics to get injections of stem cells from aborted children. The clinics claim the injections help the body fight the aging process. The article notes that in Russia, "poverty-stricken young women are paid 200 U.S. dollars to carry babies up to the optimum eight to 12-week period - thought to be best for harvesting stem cells. They are then sold on to cosmetic clinics."

The Observer, a smaller newspaper from SE Michigan, covers a recent presentation by proponents of embryonic stem cell research and human cloning for research including Representative Andy Meisner, Congressman Sander Levin and Sue O'Shea, the director of Michigan Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research . Of note, "O'Shea said the law against somatic cell nuclear transfer is in place out of fear of human cloning. But researchers believe that process would benefit organ transplant recipients.

O'Shea said researchers only want to be able to clone organs to replace malfunctioning ones, which would reduce or abolish the need for transplants."

A law banning human cloning is in place out of fear of human cloning? How silly is that?

I wonder if O'Shea explained where these cloned organs were going to come from. Cloned human embryos or fetuses, perhaps?